Posts tagged with fairytales

Jan 2 2024

Weekly Book Giveaway:Ruslan and Lyudmila, by Alexander Pushkin

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We're starting off 2024 by giving away the literary equivalent of a deep, deeeeep cut: a copy of Alexander Pushkin's 1820 fairytale-esque poem "Ruslan and Lyudmila". I'm curious to see if this one will even get any takers, but if you've ever wanted to be one of those characters in old books who appear to honestly delight in super-long poems about knights and stuff, today's your day!

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Jul 18 2023

Much ado about nothing

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There was a pearl-clutching meltdown in certain conservative circles over the weekend over a set of leaked photos from the upcoming Disney remake of Snow White, which will star actress Rachel Zeigler, who is of Polish and Columbian descent, as well as a diverse group of actors...

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Jun 26 2023

A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J. Maas

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I admit it: I have resisted reading Sarah J. Maas's enormously popular A Court of Thorns and Roses, despite recommendations from several friends. I have tried a few of her books before, and—while they were undeniably readable—they felt vaguely generic, like she'd been handed an AI-generated list of hot literature trends for young women aged 16 to 21 and told to do her damnedest to fit them all into 400 pages...

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Jun 26 2023

Weekly Book Giveaway: A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J. Maas

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This week's Book Giveaway is Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses. This is obviously an enormously popular series that certainly doesn't need my endorsement, but if you, like me, have somehow avoided reading it in the past six years or so, now's your chance to win a free copy! A full review will follow shortly...

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Oct 28 2019

Snow & Rose, by Emily Winfield Martin

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Emily Winfield Martin is best known as a visual artist, but her recent novel Snow & Rose proves she's a competent writer, as well. Inspired by the little-known “Snow White and Rose Red” fairytale, Martin has reworked it into a full-length children's book that is greatly enhanced by her delicate, richly colored illustrations...

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Mar 25 2019

Beauty, by Robin McKinley

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After last week's review of Leife Shallcross's The Beast's Heart, I decided to re-read Robin McKinley's thematically similar 1978 novel Beauty to see how it held up to my fond childhood memories. Like The Beast's Heart, Beauty does its best to transform the Beauty and the Beast fairytale into something romantic, rather than creepy...

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Mar 25 2019

Weekly Book Giveaway: Beauty, by Robin McKinley

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And this week's Book Giveaway is Robin McKinley's 1978 novel Beauty, the second installment in our (unplanned) two-book series of reworked fairytales. A full review will follow shortly, and this giveaway will run through 5/10/19...

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Mar 18 2019

The Beast's Heart, by Leife Shallcross

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There are some classic stories that just don't lend themselves to PC updates, and “Beauty and the Beast” is one of them. In her book The Beast's Heart, author Leife Shallcross does her best to minimize the fairytale's inherent problems, but there are too many to fully overcome...

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Mar 18 2019

Weekly Book Giveaway: The Beast's Heart, by Leife Shallcross

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Our latest Book Giveaway is Leife Shallcross's The Beast's Heart, the first of two Beauty and the Beast-themed reviews we're planning on over the next couple weeks. A full review will follow shortly, and this giveaway will run through 5/10/19...

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Nov 30 2018

Holiday Gift Pick #7

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Gift Idea #7: East of the Sun and West of the Moon, by Taschen Books ($40)

We recently chatted about Taschen Books' exquisite coffee table collection of Danish artist Kay Nielsen's long-lost illustrations for 1,001 Nights. While that particular book will set you back $300, Taschen also offers East of the Sun and West of the Moon...

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Oct 18 2018

Of course, they were adaptations to begin with, but still.

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There's a fascinating article at The AV Club about an important fact that may be fueling Disney's current passion for live-action remakes of their classic animated films: Disney owns the scripts for those movies wholesale, so...

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Oct 17 2018

Messy but still interesting!

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Jezebel just posted an essay by Kelly Faircloth called "Something Is Wrong in This House: How Bluebeard Became the Definitive Fairy Tale of Our Era". I found Faircloth's arguments a bit difficult to follow...

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Sep 18 2018

Cinderella at the movies

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There's an interesting article on The Mary Sue about the ever-evolving feminism of Cinderella. The author explores four different iterations of the character, and while I don't actually agree with all of her conclusions...

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Aug 9 2018

R-rated fairytales (again)

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I don't know if this is the most, uh, intellectually strenuous take on adult fairytales: according to io9, CBS All Access has released a trailer for its new series Tell Me a Story, a "serialized drama from Paul Wesley and Kevin Williamson (Vampire Diaries) that interweaves the stories of The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel into a gritty drama"...

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May 9 2018

MST3K, take note

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And speaking of awful movie adaptations, check out this trailer for an upcoming retelling of The Little Mermaid. It looks spectacularly terrible: the acting, the sets, the plot, everything. I thought it was difficult to sit through the trailer, so my heart goes out to all the parents who will be forced to sit through...

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Mar 13 2018

Scifi fairytales

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And speaking of Persuasion, I'm interested in this upcoming film starring Ciaran Hinds. Elizabeth Harvest appears to be a sci-fi take on the Bluebeard story with a little Rebecca thrown in, and despite my reservations about that poster art...

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Apr 12 2017

Festive

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Someone decided to make an extremely detailed statue of Disney's Belle out of the world's second-grossest (after Circus Peanuts, obviously) candy: Peeps...

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Feb 1 2017

This is a million times more disturbing as a live-action.

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And in non-political, non-depressing news, the final trailer for the upcoming live-action version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast is out. I am...

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Nov 16 2016

Sure? I guess?

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And speaking of unnecessary remakes, the first full trailer is out for Disney's live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. This movie strikes me as superfluous on several fronts, but the two...

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Jul 5 2016

From a High Tower, by Mercedes Lackey

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There are things I admired about Mercedes Lackey's From a High Tower, but none of its virtues are enough to elevate it above B-grade pulp fiction. Everything about it, from its slapdash editing to its hokey cover art, smacks of a rush job by a competent genre writer...

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Jul 5 2016

Weekly Book Giveaway: From a High Tower, by Mercedes Lackey

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This week's Book Giveaway is Mercedes Lackey's From a High Tower, a retelling of the Rapunzel story. I'm really not feeling that cover art (it looks super dated), but Lackey is a solid writer and I will give nearly any fairytale retelling a shot. A full review will follow shortly...

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May 24 2016

Why bother?

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The first trailer is out for Disney's upcoming "live action" adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, and I... well, I don't really see the point. I sort of understood the idea of telling a more fleshed-out version of Cinderella, seeing as Disney's earlier films...

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Apr 6 2016

With bells on

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Thanks to io9, I am now aware of the existence of The Curse of Sleeping Beauty, a totally ridiculous-looking fantasy movie that makes the upcoming The Huntsman: Winter’s War film look like Spirited Away...

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Feb 11 2016

Less Disney, more Angela Carter

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I'm intrigued by this NPR review of Giambattisa Basile's 17th-century book of fairy stories The Tale of Tales, which was apparently recently adapted into an Italian/British/French film starring Salma Hayek. The subtitle of this particular edition...

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Dec 21 2015

Weekly Book Giveaway: Winter, by Marissa Meyer

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This week's Book Giveaway is Marissa Meyer's Winter, the final installment in the best-selling Lunar Chronicles. I wasn't thrilled when Meyer delayed releasing the final novel in her series in favor of a quickie origin story for the antagonist (and charged eighteen bucks for it, too!), but it's probably time for me to get over it...

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Jul 15 2015

75% less creepy than Pinocchio, but still...

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Another week, another inexplicable live-action Disney film: according to THR, they're making a live-action prequel to Aladdin called Genies...

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Apr 27 2015

Weekly Book Giveaway: Fairest, by Marissa Meyer

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This week's Book Giveaway is Marissa Meyer's Fairest: Levana's Story. Fairest was released in place of Winter, the next chronological installment in Meyer's Lunar Chronicles. I think this is a brilliant move. Back-story novels usually only come out after the original series has ended (and they generally only appeal to the most hardcore fans), but Meyer's decision to release this novel early means that...

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Mar 17 2015

So many Cinderellas

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NPR recently featured a great article about the enduring popularity and staggering variety of Cinderella adaptations, from print to stage to screen. The article name-drops an 1893 book that had managed to collect 345 versions of the story...

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Mar 3 2015

Magical duck ponds

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Slate recently featured an excerpted fairytale from The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales, by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, which we wrote about here...

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Feb 11 2015

Kill Me Softly and Tear You Apart, by Sarah Cross

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I'm picky about retold fairytales. I get mega-irritated when an author screws up a classic story—I mean, they've already had a huge chunk of the work done for them! Ensuring that their new contribution doesn't suck seems like the least they can do...

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